


Post Dalek Sensory Disintegration

by infinite_regress



Category: Doctor Who 2005
Genre: Dalek - Freeform, Daleks - Freeform, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff, Identity, Implied Sexual Content, Missing Scene, Post-Episode: s09e02 The Witch's Familiar, Recovery, Senses, Smut, connection, love heals, missy - Freeform, post-traumatic recovery, whouffaldi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-28
Updated: 2016-03-06
Packaged: 2018-05-23 18:03:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 6,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6125323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/infinite_regress/pseuds/infinite_regress
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clara experiences after-effects from being tricked inside a Dalek by Missy on Skaro, and the Doctor has a Duty of Care. He has a protocol for sensory re-integration, but just piecing sensations together is not enough. Something else needs fixing if he is going to help Clara recover.  </p><p>Follows directly from The Witches Familiar.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The World is Grey or on Fire

**Author's Note:**

> This story starts quite dark, progresses though several emotional and sensory states before ending very happily. 
> 
> The Clara's experience in the Dalek is framed as a sort of perceptual assault, so if that is triggering for you please read with caution. This story is much more about reintegration and recovery and love though.

‘Yeah, I’m O.K, of course I’m O.K, I’m always O.K,’ Clara told the Doctor with a deceptive hug, but as the TARDIS wheezed out of her sitting room it took the last bit of colour in the world with it. 

She got a mug out of the cupboard, filled the kettle, and sat to wait for it to boil. She thought the boiling sounded far away, as if the volume on her life had been turned down. Time drifted past as she sat staring vacantly at the kettle. When she poured water it was already stone cold. She frowned and pressed the switch again then went to the sitting room.

She slumped on the sofa and turned on the T.V. to an endless stream of disjointed images. She couldn’t stand the news for more than a minute. She turned EastEnders over before the first bar of the title music had even finished. She thought David Attenborough would be soothing so she let the colourless gazelles run across her screen. Time drifted past and then it was late and the flat was cold and dark. She wandered listlessly to the kitchen. She hadn’t eaten all day but there was no way she could face food so she filled a glass with water and headed to the bathroom. She put her hand under the shower head. The water was cool and wouldn’t get warm even though she turned the temperature up high. She got in anyway and hoped the water would wash Skaro away. She soaped and scrubbed to scrape the Dalek off. She dragged a finger down the steamed-up side of the shower cubicle leaving a staggered line as she said deliberately, ‘No. More. Dalek.’ 

She stood naked in front of the mirror, red-skinned from the cool-hot-water and the scrubbing and touched two angry mosquito bites at her temples, the only visible marks from her fusion with the Dalek. She expected pain but they were numb. She must have put on pyjamas, dried her hair, brushed her teeth, but all she could remember was tumbling into sleep with the taste of Dalek in her mouth.

***

She is in the Dalek again. The smell of rot and devastation in her nose and closed in a stifling whirring and grinding symphony of hate and destruction and she can’t move and she can’t breathe and she can’t stop.

‘I am Clara Oswald,’ she yells over and over.

‘I am a Dalek,’ the machine shrieks.

She screamed and sat bolt upright with her hands clutched to her chest. Every sensation was turned up to maximum: her skin was on fire and her nightdress was soaked with sweat. Sounds were obscenely loud; the clock hammered, cars roared in the streets and her heart beat pounded her. The light under the door glared at her viciously. She flung her hands over her ears, curled up under the sheets to protect herself from the furious sensations, but she was falling, falling into the Dalek. 

‘I am Clara Oswald!’ she swore at the darkness. The darkness didn’t care. 

***

Next morning she pulled on a plain shirt and black trousers and twisted her hair into a tight bun. She stared at the mirror. Who was this woman? Dull eyes, grey skin, mouth frozen in tight-chinned stoicism, not Clara, not Dalek, but something else, created by metallic rape. 

She pushed dark cornflakes around a bowl of grey milk then settled for coffee. She sleepwalked through her day; staff meeting, tutor time, Jane Austin with year nine, verbs, adjectives and split infinitives all drifted past in a fog. It was as if she was watching a black and white home movie with the sound turned down, ‘I’m O.K. of course I’m O.K, why wouldn’t I be? Lies slipped easily off her tongue because the truth was far weirder than any lie she could dream up. School even smelled wrong. Instead of Impulse and lipstick, sports shoes and cheese and onion crisps she was plagued by wafts of iron. 

That night she brushed her teeth until her gums bled, searching for comfort in mint, but tasting metal, always metal. She collapsed into bed and stared at the ceiling. How was she supposed to feel? Upset? Scared? In need of a shoulder to cry on? She didn’t feel anything: she was heavy and numb.  
She couldn’t sleep, so in lieu of counting sheep, and for the benefit of the assembled bedroom furnishings, Miss Oswald listed - in alphabetical order - adjectives for the current state of her world: bland, cold, colourless, disjointed, distant, distorted, drab, dull, flat, hard, hollow, muted, metal, metal, and metal. She was, she decided as she finally drifted off to sleep, not a living breathing woman anymore, but iron.

Missy croons, ‘Destroy everything that’s not Dalek. That’s how it works dear, pay attention!’ as she twirls her pointy stick. ‘Dalek’s channel hate. It’s in their DNA, pet. They reload with “Exterminate.”’ She dances and tricks her way through the sewers of Skaro and seals Clara in a metal coffin. 

Missy commands, ‘Say “You are different from me.”’

Clara-Dalek shrieks, ‘EXTERMINATE,’ Love becomes hate, a friend inside an enemy, everything inverted.

‘Say “I love you!”’ 

‘EXTERMINATE!’ 

Clara thinks one of us is going to kill the other! The Doctor is hovering on obliterating her Dalek-tomb, and she’s looking at him from behind a Dalek gun. He’ll wipe me out right here and now and he’ll never know what happened – though of course Missy will gloat, how could she not? – then he’ll never forgive himself. And if my bloody weapon goes off – he’ll die and I’ll never have told him. And that will be worse than dying myself. 

***

When she woke her bed clothes were soaked in sweat and blood, her cheeks torn from her temple to her jaw, and her fingernails were caked with blood. While asleep she tried to tear out ghostly electrodes welding her into the Dale. The doorbell rang. Her neighbour, Mr Hodges, shifting from foot to foot, sent down by Mrs Hodges to check on her was stood at the door. 

He said, ‘Well, you see, there was screaming. ‘I said to the wife, “She’s probably having a bad dream, that’s all.” Or, I said, “Maybe it’s another of those sound effects from her school drama club, you know like the wheezy one she plays on Wednesdays,” that’s probably what it was, eh?’ He pulled his cap further down over his eyes. 

‘Yeah, just a bad dream, Mr Hodges. Thanks for coming down, but I’m O.K.’ She closed the door and leant her forehead head against it. She was lost. The world was either grey or on fire. She stared at the phone for a long time before she picked it up and dialled the only line of help she could think of.

 

‘Doctor. I’m not O.K.’


	2. Doctor and Patient

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Clara is in a passive state and seeing the world through jaded eyes. The Doctor is taking his duty of care very seriously.

‘You have PDSD.’ The Doctor diagnosed. 

‘You mean PTSD.’

‘No, I don’t. I mean Post Dalek Sensory Disintegration.’

‘That’s a thing?’ 

‘Of course it’s a thing! Probably, but anyway, we can fix it.’ He was babbling, but concern radiated off him, she’d give him that. He paced back and forward between the sofa and the TARDIS, shot a glance in her direction then paced some more. A couple of days ago she’d have welcomed that intense look but it barely registered now. He couldn’t keep his eyes off those angry gashes down her cheeks though, as if they were a brand that was his fault. He squinted and chewed his bottom lip, ‘I should never have left you like this.’ 

‘I was stupid, letting Missy trick me, then lying to you about being O.K.’ really moronic, she thought, and deserved everything I got.

‘Clara, Missy is a trickster par excellence. She could a trick a black hole into spitting out matter. She’s tricked me often enough and I really should know better. Don’t blame yourself.’ The victim’s not to blame, easy to say but she didn’t feel it. Naïve, stupid and confused, that was more like it. 

‘What’s wrong with me?’ She asked with watery eyes. He crouched and took hold of her hands, kept looking at her finger nails as if there was something wrong, then closed his eyes and took a deep breath. 

‘Listen to me, Clara, you’ve been through…a bad thing and need to recover.’ He shifted uncomfortably, with that tight-lipped look on his face, the one he had lately when something went wrong with her - I should stop putting you in harm’s way but I can’t do without you - Cuts both ways though, she can’t stop either.

He was talking again, ‘The way Daleks process sensory information and invert emotions overwhelmed your perceptual system and caused this dissociative state. Most of your senses are repressed, but there are leaks.’

‘Tidal waves,’ she corrected. He squeezed her hand then stood up rubbing his chin.

‘We can sort this. The TARDIS has a sensory reintegration protocol and everything we need. We should start now.’ He looked around the room. ‘Do you want to bring anything?’

‘Now I know you’re worried. You’ve never asked me that before.’

***

They were on the TARDIS in a room she’d never seen before scattered with equipment she didn’t recognise: things for checking, cleaning, treating. He filled a bowl with water and put it on the table then perched next to her. She sat bleary eyed and passive and allowed him to pick up her hand and dunk it in the water. 

‘How does the water feel?’ he asked.

‘Cold.’ He frowned. The water was warm.

‘The sensory fracture’s causing perceptual distortion.’ He gently soaped her hand, then turned it over and scrubbed her fingernails. She frowned. What an odd thing for him to do. She looked at their hands moving in the bowl. A flash of colour: blood red, ripped electrodes out in her sleep, blood under her fingernails, red in the water. Skaro, Missy, Dalek. 

‘Oh my god!’ panic tightened her throat and she tried to snatch her hand away. He held onto her and smiled reassuringly. 

‘It’s O.K. Clara. You’re safe here. Let me take care of this.’ There was no fight in her. Part of her wondered if she should take some control, but mostly she wanted to be looked after. Let him wash the blood away, let him deal with this. So she sat passively while he scrubbed and cleaned, flushed the water away, and patted her hands dry with a towel.

He picked up a tube from the table. ‘Epi-repair gel,’ he said with a forced smile, waggling it in front of her, ‘This stuff’s brilliant. Get rid of those scratches in no time.’ She blinked. Sounded unlikely, but let him try. She didn’t flinch as he cleaned the wounds. Everything numb. He patiently ran the gel up and down her cheek, waiting for each layer of skin to repair, repeated the process until every mark was gone. ‘Good,’ he said, satisfied with his handiwork, and held a small mirror up. Her reflection was vague and unfamiliar so she’d have to take his word for it. ‘Like they were never even there,’ he said, giving her shoulder a quick squeeze. Affront to her skin could not be tolerated. Would it be that easy to wipe away crawling terror and shrieking madness? He turned his attention to the angry circles on her temples where electrodes had fused her into the Dalek. Several applications of the gel and quite a bit of scanning and poking did nothing. He sighed deeply. 

‘These don’t want to budge. We’ll try again later.’ Not everything’s as easy to fix as scratches. They moved on to cataloging symptoms - in nauseating detail - then he explained the treatment as if he was a proper doctor and she a vulnerable patient. She wondered vaguely if he had a medical consent form tucked away for her to sign. He might as well have been speaking underwater, a concerned manta ray flapping and drifting through a grey ocean. 

‘The aim is to reintegrate your sensory-somatic pathways and reverse the Dalek fracture. We’ll activate each level of perceptual awareness and re-route the sensory pathways back to your somatic system.’ She aimed a glassy stare at him and he coughed, ‘Put your senses and your body back in touch.’ He shot her a sideways look, ‘How do you feel?’ Fair question, hard to answer: jaded, powerless, disconnected? A million miles from home stuck inside a reeking tin can with only a warbling psychopath for company? 

She settled on ‘Lost, I feel lost’

‘I’ll find you, Clara, I’ll always find you,’ he promised. ‘Are you ready?’ He rubbed his hands together, ready to get the patient into treatment. 

‘O.K.’ She wasn’t sure he even was the Doctor. He was a shadowy outline, a cartoon figure with wiry grey hair and rough drawn features, the red lining of his coat as dark as the rest of him: a well-intentioned puppet ready to tunnel through a mountain with a teaspoon. 

‘The TARDIS will help,’ he was saying.

‘Never liked me.’ Understatement: the TARDIS hated her, played tricks and moved her bedroom. The TARDIS was never going to help. 

‘She’s over that,’ he said with a light wave, ‘And anyway this is important,’ he tapped the wall sharply three times to reinforce the point. ‘The TARDIS will run the protocols through the sensory room and provide the environment we need for each stage.’

He cleared his throat, ‘Shall we start?’ 

‘Let’s get on with it.’ How could anyone come back from feeling like this? Maybe he could see the doubt and fear on her face because he was fussing. His eyes were red rimmed as if he was swallowing something painful back. He took hold of her hand, hesitated, and then threaded his fingers through hers. She didn’t know if it was to reassure him or comfort her. 

‘You trust me don’t you Clara?’ he said earnestly. 

‘Sure,’ she said, and let him lead her down a corridor and into the sensory room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next- in the sensory room the Doctor will try to undo the sensory fragmentation caused by the Dalek and re-integrate Clara's senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch.


	3. The Sensory Room: Blurred Vision

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor and Clara begin work on re-integrating her visual system.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor is trying hard to help, and Clara realises she has to get involved in her recovery. But that is difficult in the shadow of the Dalek.

For a sensory room it was a miserable failure. White: white walls, white floor, white everywhere, two white leather chairs in the center of the room, nothing else but roundels on the walls. She’d teased him once about the round things; he’d huffed and wouldn’t talk about it. Right now she didn’t have spare energy to hold herself up, never mind tease, so she slumped into one of the chairs. He sat upright in the next chair drumming his fingers soundlessly on his thighs. She closed her eyes against the blinding whiteness. 

‘Clara, you need to open your eyes,’ he prompted. She forced her eyes open and realised the whiteness was just a canvass. 

‘This phase will activate your visual cortex,’ he pointed to where the wall had been. In its place was a star-scape, ‘Look.’ A blurry swirl, ‘That’s the Antennae Galaxy collision. Stars are being formed there, or were, 300 million years ago from your perspective.’ He watched her face, ‘What do you see, Clara?’ 

‘A white blur,’ she said flatly. It was a meaningless indistinct shape floating in space. 

‘Look again. There are other colours there too,’ he urged gently. If she squinted she could see a bit more. 

‘Blue?’ 

‘Yes, the white and blue are new stars being formed. Anything else?’

‘No…maybe…pink at the edges?’ 

‘That’s right, hydrogen. It will create new stars.’ The image was replaced by an orb speared through by a beam of light. ‘That’s a quasar. Can you see the synchrotron radiation?’

‘I see it,’ she knew she should be feeling something but it was just white light in space, it didn’t matter at all. 

‘When synchrotron radiation interacts with Hawking rad…’ he trailed off as her eyes glazed over and she slumped back into the chair. ‘Clara,’ he cajoled, ‘Look.’ A different scene played out. ‘Do you recognise this?’ 

A perfect blue and white marble slowly climbed over a grey lunar landscape. Clara pulled herself upright, and leant a little into the image. What was that? Earth? It pricked a memory. Had she shown something like this to her year 8’s?

‘Famous photo, from Apollo something?’ She said. 

The Doctor nodded, ‘Earthrise: the view from Apollo 8 Christmas 1968. But that’s not William Anders’ picture, look closer.’ When she concentrated there was movement; Earth rising above the grey craters, a perfect mirror of every moon-rise she’d ever seen at home. There was sound too, and she strained to hear a crackly recording of an American voice piped through by the TARDIS:

“The vast loneliness is awe-inspiring and makes you realise just what you have back there on Earth.”

‘Who was that?’ Clara asked her interest pricked now. This was a famous recording; she’d played it off You Tube when she showed the picture. 

‘Command Pilot Jim Lovell. I think he was talking about the value of connection,’ the Doctor said looking away from the screen and at her, ‘between people who care about each other.’ Clara still stared at the blue marble, ‘Or some other pudding-brain notion,’ he added as if catching himself giving too much away. He looked back at the screen, ‘What colours do you see?’

‘Blue… and white...’ Earth: her home, one of millions of planets in the universe and insignificant. 

‘Anything else?’ He stood up and moved toward wall. Earth zoomed closer at a wave of his hand. She could see the whole of North and South America, and when she focused carefully she could see more.

‘I think browns and green too…maybe deserts and forests?’ And cities and roads and houses, parents, children and pets. All of them blissfully unaware that the universe was choc-full of creatures waiting blast them to bits. She wrinkled her brow, he was trying hard to help and she was being morbid. She forced herself to smile at him. ‘Yes, I can see deserts and forests.’ 

He smiled encouragingly, ‘That’s good Clara.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next: Clara needs a familiar sound to re-connect her sense of hearing. The Doctor gets out his guitar.


	4. Happy Sounds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clara is loosing her sense of herself. The Doctor reminds her who she is and tries to create a happy sound for her. He gets it wrong, and then he gets it right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A short chapter, a bit of a challenge to write as my ears are rubbish and I am not musical. But here goes!

He was a shadow with flashes of red at the edges now. He walked across the room with his guitar, the white guitar body framed by his black jacket. White, black, grey, red: at least there was some colour back in the world. 

‘We need to re-synthesise your aural pathways, Clara, connecting a sound and a good memory will counteract the acoustic fragmentation.’ She blinked rapidly at the memory of whirring and clanging and the taste of metal; encased in a Dalek-Clara-Dalek metal coffin. Sensations flooded her; the whiteness of the room glared and the silence closed in. ‘Clara,’ he was calling from far away, floating at the edge of her vision, ‘Clara, how do you feel?’

‘I don’t know what I am,’ she said with an angry edge. Fear spiked her chest and her hands shook.

‘Clara, I know who you are,’ he said urgently and she tried to anchor on his voice and held on to his hands as he put down the guitar and sat with her. ‘You are Clara Oswald,’ he said. ‘You’re a teacher. You’re brave, and clever and funny...’ He was watching her face as he spoke, and as she listened to his voice he came into focus, ‘…and you’re really quite bossy. You don’t let me get away with much.’ She smiled him a tight smile. He picked up the guitar and plucked the tune he’d played for her in a crowd of medieval faces. Do you remember this?’

‘Pretty Woman,’ she said, ‘Odd choice.’ She’d been bemused at the time, flattered, quietly pleased, wondering why he’d chosen that particular tune. He’d hugged her within an inch of her life when she came down to the arena. But now it jarred: a sound she might fall into and never escape from. She winced, crunched herself up and shut her eyes. “Pretty Woman” twanged in the air then faded. He stood guitar in hands looking at the tight ball of woman screwed up in the chair as if he was not sure what to do next. 

‘Where are you, Clara?’ he muttered under his breath. Then his fingers found a softer tune, a riff that rolled into a story, more an idea than a song. The tension slowly left her as he played and eventually opened her eyes. He seemed lost in the music, smiling softly, shutting his own eyes briefly then looking up at her. She was calmer. 

‘Does it have a name?’ she asked after a while.

‘I think it’s called “Clara.”’ 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next: The chemical senses: smell.


	5. The Smell of a Time Lord

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor tries to help Clara's sense of smell return. It's not easy and some smells just don't cut it. There is something that works though.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Clara starts to realise what she can do to help herself, and is beginning to see what she really needs.

Clara looked out of the window on the star field. Colours were clearer now and the cartoon figure was gone, thank god.

‘What’s that?’ she asked, tracing her finger across the clear wall. 

‘The Large Magellanic Cloud. On a good night you can see it from Earth with the naked eye. He finished typing on a keyboard on the wall and looked up, ‘Any change?’ She nodded slightly.

‘Um, yeah. Things aren’t so fuzzy all the time. It’s shifts in and out of focus. You sound clearer,’ she said. ‘But I can still smell and taste metal all the time.’ She wrinkled her nose and fought back a wave of nausea. 

‘That’s a sensory illusion. Contact with the Dalek created an organic molecule, Octen-2, that’s imprinted on your chemosensory system. Smell and taste are closely linked, in fact 75% of what you taste actually comes from your sense of smell.’

‘No wonder I can’t eat,’ Her nose wrinkled and lip curled at the thought of it. Her pulse spiked as the smell and taste of Dalek flooded back. She fought it by anchoring on his voice:

‘Smell has a direct pathway to memories and mood. Olfactory sensory neurones are directly wired to the limbic areas of your brain. The Dalek caused a temporary parosmia.’ He paused and then helpfully added, ‘Smell distortion.’ He was using long words that didn’t make a lot of sense, but his voice was what she really needed. She forced herself to focus on what was going on in the room to stop herself falling into the memory of Dalek.

‘What are you going to do?’

‘Same process as before. Tap into some pre-existing olfactory associations to negate the distortion.’ She gave him a mildly exasperated look.

‘Happy smells?’ she said. The chairs had been replaced with a sofa and she waited with her hands on her lap while he punched another sequence of keys then sat down next to her.

‘Can you smell anything?’

‘No.’ 

‘Now?’

‘No. What’s it supposed to be?’ 

‘Salt air. Earth, ocean. Still nothing?’ he asked with a perplexed frown. 

‘No.’ 

‘Maybe that was too subtle. He nipped out of the room and returned with a loaf of bread. ‘How about this?’ This was the TARDIS so best not to ask, she decided. She reached out and touched the loaf, but there was no fresh-baked aroma, just the tang of Dalek. She felt a catch in her throat.

‘I can’t smell it,’ she said, starting to feel her pulse pick up and heat in her face. ‘What’s going wrong?’ 

‘It’s O.K. Clara, just relax. Close your eyes.’ Concentrate; she closed her eyes and took some slow deep breaths and focused on his voice. 

‘I think I can smell something. But not bread, it’s… apple…and...sandalwood…I think.’ The Doctor coughed uncomfortably. 

‘I think that might be my aftershave.’ She opened an eye in his direction. He flustered, ‘What, you think Time Lords don’t shave?’

‘Never really considered it,’ she admitted. The image of him lathered up in front of a mirror with a razor in hand struck her as odd. She never thought of him doing ordinary things. He ate, slept sometimes, he must shower and shave like any other man. That smell really was very nice though, very him. 

‘Well, O.K. in the interest of the protocol…we’ll go with that. What do you observe?’

‘Er…subtle but masculine?’ she ventured, suspecting that was not what he meant. 

He laughed and played along, ‘Lively, magnetic with an unforgettable signature…’ Then added modestly, ‘Well that’s what it says on the bottle. Monte Blanc “Legend.” Present from Amy.’ He moved a bit closer, probably in the interests of the protocol, ‘Anything else?’

She breathed in deeply, ‘er…geranium?’ That was definitely not what he meant and she knew it.

‘I meant is the metallic smell still there?’ 

She smiled and said, ‘Nope. Pretty much just getting apple and sandalwood right now.’ 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next: Taste; calories consumed on the TARDIS have no lasting effect...


	6. Taste: Weird beats Hollow or Terrified

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor offers Clara chocolate to help re-calibrate her sense of taste. She gets impatient and wants to feel back to normal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter charts the frustration people often experience when they start to feel a bit better and understandably want things fixed quickly.

‘We’ve been at this a while. Do you want to take a break? Get some rest?’ That’s not like him, bothering about pudding-brain needs like rest. He’ll be noticing I’m a woman next. Wouldn’t that be nice?

 

‘I’d like a drink of water, but let’s press on,’ Soonest fixed, best mended. He smiled, disappeared from the room, and came back with a bar of gold and black wrapped dark chocolate, and a glass of water. He handed her the water and sank back into the sofa beside her. ‘Chocolate?’ she asked, wondering where this was going next.

 

He was grinning. ‘Calories consumed on the TARDIS have no lasting effect,’ O.K, _that_ was more like him, but he wouldn’t catch her twice with that one.

 

‘That’s not even true!’ she scoffed but couldn’t help smiling. Things felt lighter, clearer. On the screen she could see the star-scape again and this time the Eagle Nebula had three distinct columns of dark cloud surrounded by swirling green gases and pink stars. Maybe this was working.

 

He was laughing. ‘O.K. You got me.’ He pealed back the wrapper and continued, ‘With good quality chocolate a little goes a long way, so don’t worry. Not that you need to.’ She thought his eyes flicked, just for the briefest second, up and down her body as he said it. Or did she imagine that? ‘Besides, this is more or less on prescription.’

 

‘If you say something corny like “doctor’s orders” I’m probably going to slap you.’ Threatening to slap him, that was good wasn’t it? Means feeling something instead of nothing.

 

‘I’ll take that as a good sign,’ he said with a slow smile. ‘Look, we’re layering sensations to reintegrate sensory states. Tell me if it gets too much’

 

‘O.K.’  The gentle song started again, this time a recording, he was next to her holding chocolate not his guitar. He was very close: the music and sandalwood made her wonder briefly if he was trying to create a romantic mood. Probably not, he was a walking contradiction. A man who demanded to be seen yet didn’t see in return. Who made a fuss about not hugging then hugged as if his life depended on it. I want you but I don’t _want_ you. ‘This feels a bit weird,’ she ventured. Although, her rational mind piped up, weird is better than hollow or terrified.

 

‘What’s weird? It’s not weird. It’s a scientifically validated medical protocol. Nothing weird about it all,’ he spluttered, shifting in his seat and turning the chocolate bar over in his hand several times. He examined it needlessly closely then seemed to come to a decision. He quickly unwrapped the bar, offered her a piece, jumped up, and paced across the room.

 

‘O.K.’ She chewed and swallowed. Still metal. ‘Hmm.’ She had a long gulp of the water, but that didn’t help either. She put the glass on the floor.

 

He shifted from foot to foot in front of her. ‘I don’t think you gave that enough time.’ He handed her another piece. ‘You need to let the flavours develop to re-calibrate your chemical senses.’ She let the second piece of chocolate melt on her tongue. ‘A good chocolate engages all your senses; it has blood pressure lowering anti-oxidants effects too.’  He may be right about the senses but he’s wrong about blood pressure, because what started off as pleasant melting of cocoa and vanilla quickly made her pulse race. The world distorted again: from dark silence on a subway line to a train bearing down full tilt, lights dazzling, engine roaring and blasting hot air.

 

‘Doctor!’ He crouched down and grasped her shaking hands.

 

‘Clara, Clara,’ he soothed, she made an effort to calm herself and slow her breathing, but she was shaking. He sat down and pulled her into a sideways hug. ‘It’s O.K, No Daleks here. It’s safe.’  

 

She tried to put the chaos into words. ‘One minute I feel better, the next it’s all fuzziness and falling. It’s hard to explain.’

 

‘Like tuning a radio, moving between clear channels and static?’ he asked. She nodded, thinking that just what it’s like except I’m a human being not a radio.

 

‘Is this supposed to happen?’ she asked, voice rising despite her efforts to stay calm. A few hours ago she hardly cared, but now she just wanted it fixed and to feel normal again. Was that too much to ask?

 

‘There’s no rule book for recovery from something like this. I think the sensory-somatic lability is part of the re-calibration process.’

 

‘For god’s sake Doctor!’ she snapped these long words were starting to get to her. ‘This is my life not the bloody Royal Institution Christmas Lectures!’ She picked up the chocolate wrapper and wrung it into a tight twist. How could he calmly sit there dishing out science lessons when her whole world was being whipped up into a tornado every few seconds?

 

He squeezed her shoulder, and had the good sense to look abashed as he said, ‘You’re adjusting, it’s part of the process. You’re doing O.K.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next: Touch. The Doctor is trying hard to help, in his own unique way, but Clara is frustrated because he's not getting the whole picture. There's more to this than just piecing her sensory system back together.


	7. Touch: Don't patronize me, Doctor.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They have to deal with Clara's distorted sense of touch. But there's something else that's been bubbling away that they really need to deal with too.

He’d disappeared again, and this time came back into the room and handed her a brown floppy eared stuffed toy rabbit. ‘You’re not serious?’ She said. Please tell me you can see how absurd that is.

He spluttered, ‘It’s tactile. And appropriate. For the protocol,’ 

‘No way. That is beyond weird.’ Way past weird, into the ridiculous, and dangerously close to setting off fireworks. 

‘Is it?’ his voice climbed two octaves.

‘You are not a kid’s entertainer and I am definitely not a child!’ God, is that how he sees me? The mature response, of course, would be to put it sensibly out of sight. Sod that. The rabbit sailed through the air right at him. He caught it awkwardly and left it on the sofa.

‘O.K.’ he held his hands up. ‘I’ll get something else,’ he said as he went out of the door. She lobbed the rabbit at his disappearing back for good measure. It bounced and lay dejectedly on the white floor.

He came back and gave the stuffed toy a hearty kick as he passed, and put a smooth rectangular device about the size of a computer keyboard on the sofa between them. ‘Tactile panel,’ he explained. The top morphed into different colours. ‘Run your hand across the surface,’ he suggested, ‘there’s several different textures.’ 

She passed her hand over the panel. ‘All feels the same. Like metal,’ she said tightly. Her arms twitched as if electrical signals spiked through her. It didn’t feel good. 

‘Try again, slowly,’ he said, and she drew her hand across the top again and looked up at him.

‘It’s not working,’ she said. Why was everything so difficult?

‘Relax. Try with your fingertips.’ He turned her hand over so her palm was upwards. ‘You have 2500 nerve endings per square centimeter in your fingertips,’ he said. With surprising lightness he turned her hand back over and guided her fingers across the panel’s surface. She focused on the sensations at her fingertips. First there was just the pleasant coolness of his hand over hers then, then as their hands swept back and forth; she could detect differences - rough to smooth - in the textures on the tactile panel. It felt nice. 

‘I can feel it,’ she said with a small smile, and he shot her a smile back. That smile reminded her of a lot of things. Why she’d run off with him in the first place. Why she ran away with him again after Christmas, why she keeps running away with him even though he puts her in danger and leaves her in random places far too often. Probably going to keep running away with him forever, but figure him out, now that’s another story. He’s an enigma. A grumbling Scot, sometimes sweetly naïve, “I’ve parked the TARDIS in your bedroom, Clara, because no one comes in here.” Did he really think that, or did he do it on purpose so she’d never dare bring anyone back? She realised their hands had stopped moving across the panel, and he was just holding her hand, giving her that inscrutable look. 

He was so close it was hard to breathe, what with the smell of sandalwood and contradiction in her nose. It would take only an inch and he could be kissing her - or she could be kissing him. The impossibility of it pushed her into falling, falling again back inside the Dalek, one minute her senses resolved and things seemed clear, then they fractured; no glue to hold things together. That Dalek did more than fragment senses though, it made her face something else; all of it was flooding back furiously now. 

‘I thought I was going kill you,’ she said. He gripped her hand with both of his and said earnestly:

‘It wasn’t you, Clara, it was the Dalek,’ Well yes, that may be true, but it’s not the whole problem. 

‘That’s not the point!’ There was a sickening buzz growing in her chest, an angry hornet trapped in a jam-jar that was going to rattle itself to death if she didn’t let it out but might sting her to death if she did. ‘I thought I was going to kill you without ever telling you how I feel!’ she said. He knotted his brow as if searching for the right thing to say. He’d probably prefer to be re-routing sensory-somatic pathways: he looked out of his depth now. 

‘I…I care very deeply about you too,’ he said tentatively avoiding her eyes, then fell back on more familiar territory. ‘I think the reintegration protocol is working, it’s just going to take some ti…’ he trailed off, probably could see he wasn’t getting it right. He let go of her hand and straightened his shirt sleeves. He truly was the most infuriating man she had ever met.

‘I’m not a jigsaw puzzle! It’s not just putting my senses back together! There’s more to it than that!’ Her throat felt tight, like she might explode, and he was just sitting there with a bemused smile on his face fiddling with his damn cuffs. 

‘Am I missing something really obvious here?’ he asked. That’s the understatement of the millennium, Doctor. 

‘You bloody idiot! I don’t just mean I care about you deeply!’ She’d imagined this conversation many times: in none of those sweet fantasies did she play the jabbering wreck. Take a breath Oswald, time for some radical honesty: time to be Clara. 

She spoke slowly, ‘I mean, I am in love with you.’ Silence. He didn’t move. What’s he thinking? Caught between passion and denial or a trapped between a rock and a hard place? 

‘Oh,’ he said.

‘Don’t’ you dare sit there and say “Oh.” Whatever the hell is going on between us lately - don’t deny it - is definitely part of the problem!’

He looked crestfallen. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. O.K. not denying it was something, and he did look sorry. If she was going for radical honesty though, she’d better be honest too; they’d been spinning each other round in circles. It really wasn’t all his fault.

‘I never said it was your mistake,’ she said more kindly, but he still looked like a rabbit in the headlights. Hell. She fiddled with the tight bun still in her hair and swallowed back disappointment, ‘Look, It’s O.K. If you don’t feel the same way…’

‘It’s not that I don’t feel the same way,’ he said. 

She frowned. What the hell was that supposed to mean? ‘Is that Doctor-speak for you do feel the same way?’

He was really interested in those cuffs. ‘I just don’t think we should initiate any changes in our relationship while you’re in a vulnerable state,’ he said evasively. 

She thought, I Just told him I’m in love with him and he talks in riddles! Spouts paternalistic BS? She said, ‘That’s sweet, Doctor, but please don’t patronise me. You don’t get to decide I’m too vulnerable. I’m a big girl and that’s my call. You decide if you want to come to this party or not, but avoiding this,’ she waved her hand backwards and forwards between them, ‘It’s definitely part of the problem. So dealing with is part of the solution.’ 

He started to say, ‘The treatment protocol…’ but she cut him off. This wasn’t about the protocol or treatment anymore. Couldn’t he see that?

‘I don’t need you to be a therapist! I just need you to see me. A woman! A not unattractive woman, right in front of you, who is very available and has just told you she’s in love with you!’ Couldn’t make it any plainer or spell it out any more clearly than that. She looked him straight in the eyes, searching for a sign which way this was going to fall. She knew one thing: she was not going to budge first. He sat frozen. Then his eyes flicked to her lips and back up to her eyes again. There! A part of him at least, wants to kiss me! That tiny eye-flick waived his right to veto, and she moved the tactile panel out of the way, leaned in and kissed him. He held still, not pulling away but not kissing back. After a few moments she leaned back just a little with her hand pressed flat to his chest. Damn it! 

She took a deep breath, ‘Are you coming to this party or not?’ She could see he was torn, but she willed the fight out of him. He probably had good reasons for keeping his distance, but there are many just as good ones to get close. He let out a long breath, his shoulders slackened, and he smiled a small smile.

‘Clara, I’ve been at this party for a long time,’ he admitted, finally, owning up to the glaringly obvious. 

She put her hand to his face and at last he leant in and kissed her. 

She could see him. Wound fingers through the thin wisps of hair on his chest, a pale imitation of the exuberant curls on his head. Those curls made him look softer, much more him than the tight-wound expression he’d worn when he was new. She touched his face and traced her fingers playfully across his eyebrows - wanted to do that for a very long time - a deep kiss, a clash of tongues, to chase away the tang of Dalek. 

‘How’s your vision now?’ he asked.

‘Very clear.’ She could see everything: Lean shoulders, arms much stronger than they looked; hands that could end civilisations and long fingers that could play the song of the universe, but were playing a restless tune for her now. 

‘It’s about time,’ he murmured, 'isn't it.' She nodded. Sandalwood and the love of a Time Lord. Now that I can live with. 

***

The Doctor lay on his side propped on one elbow, a hand idly running through her hair. Clara lay flat staring at the open celling. She recognised the Andromeda Galaxy, one of the Milky Way’s close neighbours, and the clusters and colours stretched far across the screen and out of sight. 

He touched the red mark on her temple and she flinched. ‘Sorry.’

‘No, that’s O.K. I think it’s supposed hurt.’ He squinted at her thoughtfully.

‘Are you back, Clara Oswald? How do you feel?’

‘Much better, actually,’ she said. She’d never forget what happened on Skaro. You can’t undo your personal history, not even a Time Lord should. Surviving the Dalek was now part of what made her Clara Oswald. It was truly terrible, but she was still here, master of her own fate again, bloodied but unbowed. She looked him, grinning next to her, a survivor if she ever saw one. ‘What do you think?’ 

‘I think you feel amazing,’ he said, all hands and trying to pin her with another kiss. 

She wiggled away across the bed laughing. ‘That’s not what I meant!’ 

‘O.K, Checklist; vision, hearing, olfaction and taste, and touch. How you doing on each?’

‘Well, let’s see, vision clear as a bell. Sounds at normal levels,’ she breathed in deeply, ‘smell...what was that on the bottle? “Lively, magnetic and unforgettable?”’ she laughed and traced lines across his chest. ‘Keep splashing on the Mont Blanc!’ He grinned widely as she continued, ‘Taste. Hmm, suppose we better check, kiss me again?’ They were soon lost in the kiss. ‘Well that’s started something,’ she said. ‘Hmm…really not sure about touch. Maybe we need to check that out again...’

‘Yes boss.'

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next: a short epilogue from Clara and the Doctor about Post-traumatic Growth.


	8. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone's heard of Post-Traumatic Stress, it's very real. But did you know that other things can follow on from difficult experiences?

Later...

‘I really hate Daleks. But, in a way, its thanks to all that we finally…’

‘Post-Traumatic Growth,’ he interrupted. 

‘Is that really a thing?’

‘Yes, it really is actually, although most people have only heard of its evil twin, Post-Traumatic Stress. We can learn more from challenges than we do from easy stuff.’ 

‘I suppose we should thank Missy, then.’

‘I wouldn’t go that far.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you have been through something, remember this: you are not your adversity; you are not your diagnosis, you can change and grow out of trauma too. If you are still here, that makes you a survivor.


End file.
